Camren Hunter is an incredibly fascinating prospect, but there is a yellow flag sitting right in the middle of his resume as Kentucky basketball begins to show serious interest.
Hunter initially played two pretty productive seasons in the Atlantic Sun at Central Arkansas. After showcasing his talent against that level of competition, he decided he wanted to step up to the high-major ranks and headed to Madison to play for the Wisconsin Badgers.
To put it bluntly, it did not go well.
A career trajectory filled with massive swings
Looking at his career numbers, the contrast between the mid-major and high-major levels is something you have to at least look at if you are Kentucky basketball's new staff.
Hunter broke onto the scene at Central Arkansas, averaging 14.1 points, 4.9 rebounds, and 3.4 assists in 32.5 minutes per game during the 2021-22 season. He built on that foundation as a sophomore in 2022-23, bumping his scoring average up to 16.9 points while pulling down 5.0 boards and dishing out 3.9 assists per contest.
But then came the highly anticipated transfer to Wisconsin for the 2024-25 campaign. The bottom completely fell out in Madison. He appeared in just 11 games, seeing a microscopic 2.1 minutes of floor time per outing. He was under 1 point per game while shooting 12.5 percent from the floor. It was a bad fit.
He ultimately retreated to Central Arkansas for the 2025-26 season, where he again showed out. He looked like a totally different player, pouring in 21.0 points, 4.2 rebounds, and 2.7 assists per game while shooting an efficient 50.6 percent from the field and nearly 37 percent from beyond the arc.
The massive drop-off during his Wisconsin stint
That lone Wisconsin season doesn't really give you a ton of confidence in what could happen if he jumps back up to the high-major level again. To be fair to Hunter, there were other things that happened there.
As Badgernotes reported at the time, "A mix of injuries and lingering illness kept Hunter from establishing any sort of role, and in the end, he became a depth piece buried on a veteran-heavy roster."
Greg Gard played the guys he was most familiar with; couple that with Hunter was hurt, and you can see why his playing time was low.
But was it just the injury or did Gard not like what he saw in practice?
Evaluating the jump up in competition
Mark Pope and his staff have to look at the resume as a whole with Hunter. Is he the guy who won the ASUN Freshman of the Year, or is he the guy who struggled at Wisconsin?
When you turn on the film from his recent 21-point campaign, you see a dynamic guard who loves to get downhill, plays with pretty good energy, and has a good enough perimeter shot to prevent guys from backing off him.
We will find out very soon if Lexington is his next stop, but that Wisconsin season is at least a yellow flag that the coaching staff and BBN will worry about until he steps on the court in Lexington.